Windows
by I Can Kill You With My Brain
Summary: The eyes are the windows to the soul.


**Windows**

Eyes are windows to the soul, River knows that.

Kaylee's eyes are wide and happy and clear. There aren't any cobwebs in her brain, River knows because she's looked. They're warm and, when they look at Simon, equal parts annoyance and loving. River can see dresses with ruffles and strawberries spinning in Kaylee's eyes, dancing and twirling between the gears of Serenity. The only time dark spots appear are when she looks at River and memory comes knocking. Then they dissolve and she's back, happier than ever.

Mal's eyes are shadowed and haunted, but still honest. When River looks she can see fire and carnage and brown. They're the wind and the rain in the storm, battering her walls down until she can't tell what's real and what's false and wanders around thinking she's missing a leg or an arm. Once it was her head.

But he's kind too, and she can see the man he pretends not to be whenever he looks at Kaylee or Inara or Zoe. You can hide your expression, but you can't hide your soul. No curtains will work, they fall in tatters. She can see the tarnished cross gleaming slightly, splintered wood and bronze heaped in a corner. He pretends not to care, but who was it he was talking to when the reavers attacked?

Zoe's eyes are kinder, tempered by Wash, but they still speak of the war that lives inside of her, stuck on replay. She didn't see as much as Mal, because he protected her from it as much as he could, but she still saw enough, enough so that when River looks she can see the scars still etched in the window, like someone dragged their nails across a chalkboard.

She's hungry too, Zoe. River can see the burning passion behind her eyes, the desire for new life, little green buds poking from rich black soil.

Wash is, as always, the balance to Zoe. His eyes are carefree and laughing, his thoughts whirling like leaves on the wind. He's a bird, soaring ever higher, daring the earth to strike him down.

There's only one thing that holds him, an iron chain that binds him to Zoe. But he doesn't see it as a restriction, welcomes the restraint. The only worry he has is if the thing Zoe so desperately wants will be enough to break the chain and send him hurtling back to the ground.

Book is different again, and he's the only one that scares River, though she'll never tell anyone. Secrets are pressed so close to the glass she can't even see in, handprints smudging and breaths fogging the window up. He worries her, but she'll keep his secrets for as long as he keeps his hair tucked away. After all, if the crew knew, they would shove him away, and she won't be the cause of him losing the only family he feels he has ever known.

Inara is burning like Mal, but her fire is different, less harsh. It's warmer, comforting, but dark shapes flicker across it, casting shadows stretching across the glass. There are walls too, blocking the light from reaching all the way out. She's bound by rules and regulations, though she likes to pretend she's free. Pretty little bird in a pretty little cage.

Jayne is the clearest on the ship, but River doesn't like to look. It's all weapons and whiskey and women for him. Red is in his eyes like a flood, and she wonders if when he cries it's tears of blood.

There is one corner that surprises her, no matter how many times she looks. His mother lives there, dispensing wisdom and kind words that only sometimes make their way through as she placidly knits, her needles flashing.

And then there's Simon, and he's both her favorite and most hated. She loves him because when she looks, her face pressed up against the glass like a kid at a candy store, all she sees is herself, hundreds of images reflecting back at her like mirrors.

She dances and spins and teases him for being so slow. She can see herself doing her homework when she's younger, side-by-side with Simon on their couch. She can see who she was, and she clings to those scraps, because they're all she has of her past.

She hates it though because Simon also has her as she is now trapped in his eyes, huddled in corners and crouched in cells, trapped behind bars. She's everywhere and nowhere. She follows herself as she laughs in the park and runs into herself in handcuffs locked to the floor as she screams.

River never looks in her own eyes if she can help it, she's afraid of what she'll see. Things flicker and change in a heartbeat, monsters reaching out to grab her or Simon smiling and inviting her in. Secrets crowd together, milling aimlessly in a small space, bodies jammed together until it feels like she's going to explode.

It's all mirrors in her mind, but it's not like Simon's, nice and neat and an escape. They suck her in and won't spit her back out until she follows the reflections. Sometimes she wishes she had thread, but something far worse than a minotaur lurks in her.

She's forced to slip her way through the mirrors, trying to follow herself. Some mirrors are cracked and broken, others filled with smoke or blue or red. Some look normal until she lens closer, and then she sees the way she's covered in blood or snakes surround her and she screams.

She can never be sure which self she is following; whether it's the child, the almost-sane one, the assassin, or the psychotic mess. Sometimes she's following the little girl, hair swinging and dress swishing as she skips along singing softly, when the little girl turns with a gun in her hand and blood on her dress. Or she's following the almost-sane one as she reads her book and absently corrects the grammar when she realizes that she's muttering to herself, the sentences jumbled and distorted.

Eyes are windows to the soul, and you can never forget what you saw inside.


End file.
